Dietrich and Lion captured the tone of Berlin: cheeky, tough, and right to the point. They shared a skeptical, saucy irony and a sad gaiety, the melancholy and aplomb of the city dweller. People who came to see Schiffer and Lion delighted in sexual ambiguity; the gay bars in Schöneberg were simply more amusing than the tea dances in Charlottenburg. After the performance, they headed to Eldorado on Motzstrasse, with a big hodgepodge of refined ladies, ambitious girls, pretty boys, transvestites, literati, financiers, and erotomaniacs. It was important to be on good terms with the owner, because not everyone was welcome here. If he did not like someone, he would come to the table himself and tell the guest that his order would be on the house, but he was not to return. An orchestra played dance music; the audience—which ranged from high-society Berlin couples to out-of-towners who had heard that Eldorado was the place to be—sat on either side on daises. The chubby bartender blew kisses, flirted with everyone, and could easily turn out to be a woman, while a lovely ballerina might unexpectedly turn out to have a male voice. Lion and Dietrich knew that they could not simply go home after their performance—they had to put in an appearance at Eldorado. This was where rumors flourished, and rumors made for the best publicity. Dietrich also socialized at the Silhouette, a small, disreputable bar on Gaisbergstrasse “with a nattily dressed black waiter and boys in women’s clothing up at the bar. Everyone who was anyone could be seen here.”41 They sat together night after night in red booths, with the band playing “Just a Gigolo,” and “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame.” The atmosphere was less swanky and more intellectual at Schwannecke, a wine bar near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church where established theater people and authors got together. The bar, harshly lit by bare lightbulbs, was generally overcrowded because there were only twenty tables. The proprietor was himself an actor at the Volksbühne. His famous, and not-so-famous, guests came late in the evening, usually after the performance. At Schwannecke, you could run into Carl Zuckmayer, Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Bergner, Conrad Veidt, Ernst Toller, Lion Feuchtwanger, Rosa Valetti, or Heinrich George. Schwannecke was the place to get roles, plan careers, and spark rumors. The cafés at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, where Reinhardt’s students gathered, were regarded as the waiting rooms of fame. But once someone had secured a place in the Schwannecke, one (almost) belonged. Erich Kästner found that in Berlin, the place at which an artist spent his time was the best gauge of his level of success. “When you hear: ‘He doesn’t go to the Romanische anymore. He now spends a lot of time at Schwannecke,’ this implicitly signaled signed contracts, advancement, budget surpluses, imminent fame. The two places were no more than three minutes away from each other, but it takes some people decades to get from one to the other, and most never make it at all.”42 Dietrich, at any rate, did make it, once It’s in the Air became a hit.
She was often away from home at night and had lovers, but she continued to live with her husband and child in a large apartment on Kaiserallee. The couple slept in separate rooms, Sieber in his study, and Dietrich in the master bedroom. When she was in Vienna, one of her colleagues took care of Maria. Tamara Matul was one of the many Russian women who had fled to Berlin with her parents and siblings before the revolution.43 Her good looks and shapely legs landed her in show business, and she even had a small part in It’s In the Air. Tamara was shy and lacked the skill to achieve stardom. Once she became Sieber’s lover, she did everything in her power to please him: by day she was the devoted nanny, and by night the undemanding paramour. This arrangement worked out perfectly for Dietrich, who could pursue her relationships and maintain control over her husband’s love life. Tamara was weak, vulnerable, and sweet, so Dietrich could rest assured that Sieber would not leave her for Tamara. Sieber was still struggling to get established in film and hoped that, with a bit of luck, his wife would be a success. She did not need to feign love or faithfulness, and she appreciated the fact that he let her do as she liked, but she literally paid the price by bringing home the money that guaranteed a good life for all of them. The two did not separate, and they raised their child together. They were a production team, with the product being Marlene Dietrich.
Dietrich was not one of those newcomers to the city who complained that Berlin was a locus of unhappiness or crowed about the city being so deliciously wicked. She was at home in Berlin, which Joseph Roth called a “young and unhappy city-in-waiting.”44 Unlike Paris or London, Berlin could boast of nothing but endlessly long streets and an array of train stations.
The Villa Felsing was located on Lichtensteinallee in the upscale Tiergarten section of Berlin. Dietrich’s uncle Willibald was an attorney who had been awarded the Iron Cross during the war, as well as a successful businessman. He was quite fond of the cinema and liked to surround himself with actors and directors; he rented to Oskar Messter, a film tycoon, and he sometimes shared his villa on Lichtensteinallee with Conrad Veidt. Jolly Felsing, Uncle Willy’s wife, was from Galicia. She was a beautiful woman, ten years younger than her husband. The cocktail parties at the Villa Felsing were the talk of the town. There was a Steinway grand piano in the parlor on which the Austrian tenor Richard Tauber was accompanied. Dietrich often came to the villa; she reveled in this mysterious, melancholy, yet oddly high-spirited atmosphere. As might be expected, Josefine von Losch did not want her daughter spending time there, but Dietrich paid no heed to her injunctions.
The social scene in Berlin had been transformed by war and inflation. Old and new money intermingled. Prosperous speculators enjoyed being seen in the company of destitute young women from noble families; Russian princesses waited on art dealers of the European avant-garde; and conservative bankers furnished their homes in the Bauhaus style. The cocktail parties at the Villa Felsing brought together notables from the world of film—Conrad Veidt, Richard Tauber, Emil Jannings, Claire Waldoff, and Lil Dagover—with Wilhelminian Prussian princes Adalbert and Eitel Friedrich, influential businessman Alfred Hugenberg, and General Hindenburg. These parties were ideal for an ambitious young actress looking to make contacts. Dietrich’s cousin, Hasso Felsing, vividly recalled Dietrich’s presence at the social events in the villa.
Jolly Felsing was known for her extravagant taste, and pictures of her were featured in Die Dame, Elegante Welt, and other women’s magazines. Eventually Willibald realized that his wife’s lifestyle was not really cultivated; she simply liked spending money. The couple separated, and he died in 1934. She married twice more. Hasso heard that Dietrich had gone to America, but he would not see the movie that made her famous until after the war. Still, her husky voice resounded through the villa again and again. His mother spent whole days lying on the chaise longue in the big parlor and playing “Falling in Love Again” on the gramophone. The boy was surprised, because his cousin Marlene had never sung at the parties.
Dietrich earned good money, and her daughter recalled that plenty of it was spent: “As a very young child, I saw luxuries come and go, be replaced by more luxuries, without any fanfare or particular excitement. No ‘Look everyone—I got it! The coat I have been saving for, the one I wanted for so long . . . It’s mine! Isn’t it wonderful? Let’s celebrate!’ My mother just appeared one day with a mink coat, threw it on a chair, from where it slipped to the floor, lying there forgotten while she strode off to the kitchen to cook dinner.”45 Dietrich was a woman with style, and what should a woman like her wear if not mink?
Kurt Bernhardt cast her opposite Fritz Kortner as a beautiful, mysterious creature named Stascha in The Woman One Longs For. The filming was said to be fraught with tension, because Kortner aimed to be Dietrich’s lover in real life as well. Stascha is an unhappy woman who makes her lover commit murders for her. This is not one of Dietrich’s usual coquettish roles that had her rolling her eyes and striking poses. Her movements are those of a sleepwalker; she usually keeps her eyelids half closed; they open for only brief moments, with provocative languor. Dietrich slows the pace; her character is innocent and depraved at the same time, and seems to
spend most of her time smoking. She now dispensed with her monocle and other cheap gags. In one scene, we see her sad, beautiful face arise from the smoke behind a frozen windowpane. Again and again we watch her apply her makeup. She does not have the trendy, doll-like, heart-shaped mouth; hers is big and sensual. Destruction and eroticism blend into one. Stascha demands sacrifices of men, whom she then sacrifices. Dietrich proved that she had mastered the game of devotion and delay. The Woman One Longs For was Dietrich’s first movie to present her as a star, and she began to be known as “the German Garbo.”46
Well aware of the limitations of her talent, she tried to find roles best suited to her. She started by playing lower-class, loose women, then unscrupulous women, and was eventually cast as the femme fatale. Strikingly often, the setting of these films was Paris, the subject was almost always love, and—oddly—they wound up perpetuating class distinctions. In the end, the aristocrats realize that they feel a need to stick with the principles of honor that befitted their station in life. These movies were set in the present, but they upheld the values of the past.
Dietrich made her way up in the business. She had experience in both theater and film, and she could sing and dance. Her work ethic was exemplary. True to her mother’s teachings, she was punctual, friendly, well prepared, and uncomplaining. Although she was a wife and mother, she enjoyed making the rounds of the night spots, especially Schwannecke, Eldorado, or Eden. No matter how late she stayed out, Dietrich showed up on time at rehearsals or on the set, and everyone wondered how she managed to look so gorgeous early in the morning. At long last, she could be beautiful and seductive, and was even paid for the privilege. Her vibrantly colored clothes from this period were sophisticated and beautifully tailored. She enjoyed combining fashion that was considered typically feminine with traditional men’s clothing. She would wear delicate lace cuffs and elegant kimonos, yet she also had bright blue sailor-style coarse linen trousers made to order. She had originally dreamed of performing in concert halls around the world, and now she was delighted to see her name on the cast list of a revue. But as a child of the war who had been raised in the Prussian spirit, she had learned above all how to get by. She persevered and grew progressively more successful in the business of fiction. She performed on small and large stages and acted in naïve, bawdy, and slick movies, yet no failures could keep her from forging ahead. She barely registered the political polarization of the Weimar Republic, agitprop theater, or the ideological messages of angry young writers. She now had to provide for a husband and a child, even though her marriage had failed to bring her happiness.
Leni Riefenstahl’s luck as an acclaimed dancer held out all of six months.
In these six months, my feet danced across the great stages, at home and abroad . . . more than seventy dance recitals. . . . Every hour and every thought was about dance, every day filled with tough practice that went on for many hours, rehearsing new dances, and designing new costumes. Everything I saw in these six months, paintings, sculptures—everything I heard, music—for me, everything had connections only to dance. I seemed destined by fate to live my life exclusively in dance, today and for all time.47
Riefenstahl claimed that it had been Max Reinhardt who had advanced her career; she liked to explain that her old admirer Vollmoeller had brought Reinhardt to one of her dance recitals, and Reinhardt was so taken with her that he offered her a spot at his theater right then and there. Moreover, she proudly pointed out that she had been the first dancer to perform without an ensemble “at the most famous theater in Germany.” That is just as untrue as the claim that she performed for six evenings and several matinees. According to the archivist at the Deutsches Theater, Riefenstahl had only two performances at the Deutsches Theater: on December 16, 1923, at noon and on December 20, 1923, at 8 p.m. Moreover, she was not the first solo dancer to perform on Schumannstrasse.48 Her name does not appear in any of Reinhardt’s writings.
Riefenstahl choreographed her own dances. The back of the stage was all black, and she used the music of famous composers, such as Franz Schubert and Frédéric Chopin. She was barefoot and wore loose garments; performing without toe shoes and a tutu was a sign of commitment to an avant-garde aesthetic. She designed her costumes herself, then her mother had them made. Once her father was persuaded of Leni’s talent, his wife could finally devote herself to supporting their daughter, whom she accompanied, looked after, and admired. Riefenstahl had prevailed: her career as an artist had become a family affair, and would remain so. She surrounded herself with her family and her loyal admirers and brought her pianist, Hermann Klamt, with her when she went on the road. Three years earlier, Mary Wigman had had to bring in a new musical accompanist for every dance recital because she did not have sufficient financial resources to add a pianist to her staff. Riefenstahl had no such need to cut corners. She claimed to have taken in five hundred to a thousand of the new, stable rentenmarks per performance, which enabled her to buy nice clothing and engage her own pianist. From this point on, she always found a way to amass substantial funding for her projects.
The beginning of Riefenstahl’s career coincided with the period of hyperinflation. She was one of the young and nimble to emerge as victors in a time of upheaval and turmoil. She saw an opportunity for herself in the shifting function of culture that this period had triggered, with the help of Harry Sokal, who owed his fortune to inflation. Remarkably, she managed to sidestep the mass entertainment that came from America and never succumbed to the temptation to become a showgirl. Her artistic rise was a part of the history of the Weimar Republic that has yet to be told in full. The heyday of the avant-garde was over, and New Objectivity and neoclassicism were making their entrance.49 This pan-European aesthetic retour à l’ordre was intensified in Germany by the abovementioned political and economic upheavals in the wake of defeat, revolution, and inflation. For the impoverished middle class, buying a book or a ticket to the theater was no longer a top priority. Publishers and authors lamented a catastrophic decline in the level of public taste.50 Riefenstahl’s successes as a dancer need to be seen against this backdrop: She did not go in for the “grotesque dance” associated with Valeska Gert or the abstract style of Mary Wigman, but instead catered to an audience looking for middlebrow entertainment and wary of overly sophisticated art—in other words, an audience very much like herself.
Riefenstahl gravitated to a trivialized form of the avant-garde. Where there is an avant-garde, a rear guard cannot be far behind. She performed at a remove, and she did not get beyond the stage of feigned emotion.51 Her dance was not innovative; she reworked experimental and modern forms of dance to craft a popular performance style. “She has the oriental physical pathos, the vibrant arabesque from Wigman, but with one major difference: for Wigman, dance is rhythmic thinking, abstraction, while Leni Riefenstahl always remains within the melodic structure.”52 Riefenstahl was out for commercial success. Her advertising brochure bore the title: “The Dancer Leni Riefenstahl. Excerpts from Press Reviews,” and her portrait graced the cover. The brochure was printed in Innsbruck, so presumably Sokal paid for this advertising material. The reviews it contained were written in the period between October 1923 and April 1924. The critics rarely failed to point out her beauty and youth, which seemed to be what drew them to the performances. In the words of one Swiss journalist: “She came, she was seen, she conquered.”53
Riefenstahl sought to reign triumphant. She adopted the dramatic solemnity of expressive dance, but applied it only to herself as the embodiment of an artist. In doing so, she claimed to represent the spirit of a greater artistic totality. Her dancing was unpersuasive because it lacked spiritual substance. Riefenstahl believed that everything emanated from within herself, and the result was hollow art. She was more interested in technique than in feeling, and she was utterly unable to infuse her dance with emotion. She figured that strenuous physical exertion could compensate for her lack of inner conviction. “During the intermission, I would lie on whateve
r couch I could find, bathed in sweat, incapable of saying a single word. But my youth and the strenuous training made me overcome any exhaustion.” Art and pain went hand in hand. In July 1923, she attended a summer dance course offered by the Jutta Klamt School at Lake Constance. When she returned to Berlin, she continued working with Klamt. In the mornings, she studied classical ballet with Eugenia Eduardowa, and in the afternoons she headed to Klamt’s school of dance.54 Klamt was one of the most successful teachers of expressive dance in the twenties. She systematically appealed to women to awaken from their passivity. Klamt immersed herself in modern aesthetics and claimed that her work aimed at discovering spiritually inspired abstraction in dance.55 She would come to identify with National Socialism more closely than just about any other dancer. In her numerous writings, she consistently stressed an experience of wholeness and promised enhanced vitality to those who joined up with her. The recovery that she herself had experienced was of key importance to her artistic concept. The abstraction of dance, she explained, enables a dancer to liberate herself from an oppressive person or episode in her life. Dance enabled Riefenstahl to free herself from her father and become an artist. It brought her liberation and meaning, pathos and ecstasy.56 Art, beauty, and strength would remain the core of all stages of Riefenstahl’s career.
Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives Page 8
